Five things I learned watching Precious

With all due respect, past and present, and without further to do.

1) Fat chicks cannot hold they fried chicken.

I was on the fence about seeing Precious, because Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are involved. Normally, I wouldn't want to contribute any of the money my parents work so hard for to either of them - even though they should probably be viewed like the US gov't, in that there isn't anything I can do to stop them, so I might as well just give them my money and shut the fuck up. Then I read that there's a scene in which Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken. It was one of the main points in Armond White's review, in which he called Precious the worst movie for black people since Birth of a Nation, or something to that effect. I was sold. Alas, the fried chicken scene ended up being somewhat of a letdown. I was hoping that director Lee Daniels would insist on a Nicolas Cage-style "method" performance from the girl who played Precious, in which she really did eat an entire bucket of fried chicken. You know she could. But instead they just show her taking a few bites, as she books it down the street to her "alternative school." Then she tosses the bucket, thus signaling that she ate the entire thing. Then, without any kind of warning, they show her vomit it all up into a trash can, probably not because she was several months pregnant, but because she had to do so much running.

2) Blogging professionally is like being on welfare, without as much money.

There's a scene, later on in the film, where a mustachioed, lunchladylike Mariah Carey asks Precious what her mother does. Precious replies that her mother doesn't do shit, other than sit in a chair and watch TV. She won't even leave the house, except to play her number (like in Malcolm X). Precious' mother, played by the comedian Mo'nique, pretends to look after both Precious and Precious' daughter, Mongo (more on her in a minute), in order to collect a shedload of welfare. The film does go into this, but I bet she got even more money than the typical welfare mother, because Mongo had special needs - even though mothers of retarded kids should probably receive less, since it's not like the kids can tell the difference. Mongo actually lived with its grandma, who would only bring it over when social services paid a visit. Mo'nique probably wouldn't have kept Precious around either, except Precious did all of the cooking. And you know fat chicks know how to make some chicken. Anyway, watching Mo'nique sit in that chair, watching TV, ordering Precious to bring her some chicken, I couldn't help but note the similarities between her life and my own. That's basically what I do, except I have to get my own fried chicken. And I have to update these damn blogs. I might need to see about ditching this blogging shit, in exchange for a retarded kid I can keep in a cage in my basement, so I can get on welfare. My viewing of Precious this past weekend just so happened to coincide with the New York Times' Page 1 story about how mad white people are on welfare now. That coupled with the revelation a few weeks ago that 90% of black people have been on welfare at some point or another has me wondering if I should try to get some sort of assistance. It just doesn't seem right that I should have to pay a portion of my high four figure salary from XXL, however minuscule, to help feed the children of white people who live in half a million dollar houses, whose ancestors probably used to own my grandpa. Where's my King Vitamin?

3) Mongo is an appropriate name for a child with Down syndrome.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when Precious told Mariah Carey that she had a daughter named Mongo. Mariah Carey was like, "Huh? Mongo?" Precious was like, "Yeah, Mongo, short for Mongoloid. She has Down syndrome." I about died. Fortunately, it was in a theater that was a solid three-fourths black, so it was hardly the only such outrage. You could barely hear the dialogue, over the constant din of people providing their audio commentary, MST3K-style. However, there weren't nearly as many instances of people just plain ol' shouting at the screen as I expected. I don't know if they all saw the post on my own site about where I should see Precious and felt self conscious, or what. The theater was in Creve Coeur, MO, around the corner from where I grew up, and you can consult the Wiki for the demographics on that. But like I said, this was still three-fourths black people. Black people must be getting soft, in the Obama age.

4) Sex predators should prey on morbidly obese women.

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a woman who's "wheel chair fat" walking around my job with a newborn baby, I could afford to take the afternoon off to get some glitter on my face. (Lord knows I deserve it, after the three day-long weekend of nothing but verbal abuse that I just endured.) Because I'm racist against my own people, I just assumed this was a matter of black men being extreme chubby chasers. You know black guys claim to like thick broads, but then you see them with nothing but fat chicks. Maybe the whole thick euphemism was just an excuse to go hoggin', and these pregnant piano box girls were just the saddest, most extreme example of said phenomenon. Now I'm not sure what to think. Precious didn't get her babies from one of her classmates at the alternative school or some shit, she got 'em from her father. Eww!. There's a scene where some guys try to holler at her while she's walking down the street, then one of them pushes her down, but I'm pretty sure they were being facetious. If any of them were interested in getting with her, I'm sure that's something they'd want to keep on the down low. This was back in the '80s, when men had standards. There's a subplot involving Precious wishing she had a light skinted boyfriend, who occasionally appears in fantasy sequences, and there's one scene where she whines to her classmates at the alternative school that she's never had a boyfriend, so to speak, other than her father. By the end of the film, she realizes her father raped, if not rape-raped her. But even then it's only because Mariah Carey planted that idea in her head, and you can tell the memory of these incidents is somewhat bittersweet. I'm not saying what her father did was right. I'm just saying. I'm sure forced sex is a lot worse for someone who isn't as hard up.

5) Once you've fucked another guy in the ass, a vagine just isn't tight enough.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing I've seen in my entire left, let alone in Precious, is the barely concealed subtext having to do with the various kinds of "openings," shall we say, available to an ex-con. Never mind the skin tone issues, this shit is fucked the fuck up. What I'm referring to, in case you've seen the film and it flew under your radar, is the scene near the very end, in which we learned how Precious got to be in the situation she was in. Mariah Carey pressed Mo'nique to reveal the nature and the extent of the sexual abuse that took place in her home, so maybe Precious, Mongo, and the new baby, Abdul (no, really), could come live with her and she could get another, even more ridonkulous check. So Mo'nique lets loose with the story of the first time Precious was sexually abused by her daddy/babydaddy. Mo'nique was having sex with this guy, whose name is of course Carl, while a three year-old Precious was lying next to them on a pillow. All of a sudden, Carl shifts his attention from Mo'nique to Precious, and... well, you can guess what happened. Mo'nique said she didn't want him to do that, because she knew where he'd been, but he told her to shut her fat ass up, so she did. I took this to mean that she knew Carl was on the DL, and that his unit wasn't clean. Mo'nique's cavernous vagine wasn't as capable of satisfying him as it was back when they made Precious, but she was too mean a person to take it up the coat. She didn't want to do anything that might provide another human being with comfort. It couldn't have been because she had standards, living in a place like that. This isn't conjecture, mind you. Mo'nique says herself that she never let Carl shove it in her pooper. That's why she wasn't sweating getting tested, when she found out Precious was HIV-positive. If it wasn't for the graphic description of that initial act, and the film's other teh ghey subtext (involving Paula Patton!), and the fact that the guy's name was Carl (the second most teh ghey common name, behind Bruce), not to mention the fact that Precious director Lee Daniels himself is teh ghey, maybe I could believe there's nothing to this theory. Maybe.